


If You Do, If You Don't

by SilviaKundera



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Grief, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-06-25
Updated: 2003-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-23 01:48:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilviaKundera/pseuds/SilviaKundera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"My parents aren't back." He hadn't meant to say it out loud, but the words didn't care and they were true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Do, If You Don't

**Author's Note:**

> Written after Book 5 but anticipates a couple things that occur later in canon.

"My parents aren't back."

He hadn't meant to say it out loud, but the words didn't care and they were true. They started coming and he couldn't stop them, brisk and solid, because it was stupidly obvious, and unavoidable, and simple enough that it shouldn't have hurt half as much as it did.

And it _hurts_. It hurts like their fading ghosts in the mirror and the first smooth of his fingers over the photographs, except a thousand times worse and so much more honest. So much more final, and real, and like a brilliant, sloping signature.

Goodbye, goodbye, and it isn't _right_. It just _isn't_.

Ron's looking at him strangely, and there's another non-surprise that pains Harry far more than he would have believed before the ache was there. Sharp and present. Ron's watching him with the kind of careful that Hermione wears, the kind that makes Harry want her hand on his shoulder or her body far across the room, out the door, on a different continent. He can't make up his mind and isn't that just _like_ him.

He knows one thing, one thing only, truly, _deeply_ , and it's that they should _not be dead_. He's known it since he can remember, with the faint whiff of oil in the pan and fuzzy large hands passing breakfast by to the next highchair.

He knows -- or, he _knew_ , and he knows better now but he can't quite grasp it, can't quite get it to catch -- that the war was not about getting them back. It was winning to win, and they aren't a prize, they aren't on the table, but they _should_ be. He feels that they _were_ , deep down hot and angry in his stomach, and he could mourn Dumbledore properly if only he didn't feel so betrayed.

"Well, yes," Ron says quietly, cautiously, and Harry almost hates him. It's a short, vicious streak, and ends in the quick jerk of Ron's wrist and the bitten down edges of Harry's nails and the words they don't say.

"I thought--" Deep pull at his lungs and he's going in circles, so Harry says, " I just thought," and leaves it there, because he just _has_ to.

He won't waste his breath and he won't deal with Ron now. Ron can stand by the kitchen and he can just sit here -- by the window and watching his new owl, swooping simple Muggle toy like, down and up, up and down. He needs to name her, he's _needed_ to, but it would be his mum's name at moment, and Harry couldn't bear it.

He'll wait until it's Lucretia, Lucretia or Lunes or Diana, and when she's struck down it won't hurt like the second death of his mother. It'll sting, like Sirius maybe always will, but it won't be the end of him, it won't, and Ron won't pause softly like Harry's half-way to cracking.

Uncharitable, circling vulture thoughts, barbs on the tip of his tongue and the cruelest cusp of his brain, and it's nothing like friendship but a lot like them. A lot like they work, and it's a lot like knowing, like certainty, and Harry _needs_ some like nothing else he's ever needed in the world apart from the two people he can't ever get.

He needs to push and feel Ron push back, so he does, he says, "You wouldn't understand," and listens for the thick, rushed intake of breath.

He hears the grind of Ron's heel against the aging wood that serves as a floor, and they might have had to fix that once, but they're leaving soon, they're all taking their leave and saying their goodbyes (goodbye, goodbye, and it _isn't_ \--) and it's a sudden thought -- _we're waiting, we're waiting with our unfinished business_.

Ron should be up with the rest of them, tucked under sheets, strapped tight for their nightmares. He's spent enough time quiet in hallways, as a second pair of clomping feet. As a third.

In strange houses with mysterious, indiscernible patterns to their pantries, hideways that begin to make sense right when you're moving, until you stop, until everyone stops, and they all get off at the station except some of them.

And he wouldn't say it, he wouldn't, but Ron won't turn towards the stairs until _he_ does, and Harry can't with, "Or did you lose them too? 'Cause Molly, she says, she's always saying," with this (it's sing-song sickly sweet and his voice is cracking) in his throat, "she's always, you're like a _son_ to me, I'm like a--" And he can hear himself. He doesn't feel it, but he knows how he sounds: slightly hysterical.

Ron's hands on his face, damp and feverish, " _You're not my brother_ ," and one of them is shaking.

"Oh, god, I think I _am_ , I think that's why they're not coming, because---" Ron is something like everywhere, because Harry can breathe him, he can _taste_ him, and he's gagging, the nothing he's eaten scraping like bits of glass at the dip between neck and chest.

"Because they're _dead_ , Harry, and it's not something you can take _back_ ," so sensible that Harry wants to draw blood from him, and does, ripping at thin, unfreckled knuckles.

Sensible and yet not, because they all know (what they don't think about)--

"No." Blood on his forehead, hot smears of it, then both hands at the back of Harry's neck. Locked there. "That's not alive. That's, that's not _Tom_ , Harry. You _met_ him."

"Dumbledore -- you haven't heard it. That's what he _called_ Him."

Something less than perfect in the headmaster's stance, something pained on that syllable, and there must have been times in hallways and offices, there must have been letters, and he must have _trusted_.

Harry has maybe never, not truly, but he fears he could and he knows that should be hope.

"He couldn't let go," Ron says softly, like Harry is made of glass and Ron loves him. And Harry _hates_ him and doesn't, at all, and Harry's never been more sea sick from it, and doesn't remember that spell. Doesn't remember how to stop these things from happening.

There's a forehead slipping against his forehead, thumbs rubbing circles above his collarbone, and Harry tries to breathe with them, in and out.

"I'm scared. Scared that I can't." Frank, and honest like all of this. It's his voice, the one that's really his, and he wants to name his bird and he wants Ron to be his brother and he wants Ron to be his friend and he wants Ron to kiss him.

"Okay," Ron says, and touches Harry's mouth, and it's close enough.


End file.
